The lens of 'Eddie Coyle'

"The Departed," which won Best Picture for 2006 at the Oscars, is the best Boston crime movie in memory, but only for those who have never seen "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," which opened in 1973.

This movie is not only the best crime movie ever made about Boston, it is the best movie ever made about Boston, period. (No? Go ahead, punk, make my day.) It is being released this Tuesday on DVD by the Criterion Collection. This news will delight its legions of fans who will see once again the stillness of Mitchum in one of his greatest roles, against Nicholson's eat-the-scenery show.

It is no secret that Boston has fared poorly on screen. "The Last Hurrah" with Spencer Tracy was nothing special. "The Verdict" with Paul Newman was good, but while it was set in Boston, there's not much Boston in it. "The Thomas Crown Affair" was also good but, again, didn't give us much of the city. The overrated movie "Good Will Hunting" with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck was good blue-collar Cambridge, while another overrated movie, "Mystic River," was good blue-collar Boston. But none of them got the job done.

What elevates "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" above all of them is its study of time and place. The story is set in the early '70s, when Boston was on its heels. Higgins showed us the underbelly of the city and brings us Eddie Coyle, a petty hood who runs guns for bank heists. Coyle is trying both to stay alive and avoid an upcoming jail sentence. He is hapless, hopeless, and he breaks your heart.

Eddie Coyle's Boston was gray and cold and grimy. Characters huddled against the cold and blew on their hands. You saw their breath in the mean air. They drove the long, ugly Detroit cars of the time, some swaybacks with rust and bad tires. Higgins sat back and, without judgment, let treachery and pain unfold.

No one wanted to live in Boston in the '70s. Some property owners in poor neighborhoods burned down their buildings for insurance money. People left the city. Boston was on life support. You could buy a mansion on Beacon Hill for a song. Suburbanites avoided the city. Their men came to work in the Financial District and went straight home to Dover and Lincoln. For the well-heeled out there, the Boston draw consisted largely of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Museum of Fine Arts.

It is hard for the legions of people who have moved here in the past couple of decades to grasp the earlier reality. There was no chic to Newbury Street past Exeter. No Cartier, no spark. Men went to Brooks Brothers for boxy suits and billowing shirts, while the women went to Bonwit Teller and Charles Sumner for high-end fashion. Beyond Exeter was a dim world of rental apartments over forgettable stores.

And, of course, there was no bling back then. Boston regarded bling like four-day-old fish. Bling ran counter to the well-appointed discomfort in which the Brahmins luxuriated, best represented by the brutal seats at Symphony Hall. As for fine dining, there were the Ritz, Locke-Ober, Dodin-Bouffant, and Joseph's. (L'Espalier arrived toward the end of the decade.) Men consumed tired beef and good gin at their clubs.

Higgins had the best ear in the business. He built his dialogue on elliptical arcs of sharp words and arid humor. He was a Brockton native who labored at various stages of his life as a journalist, lawyer, federal and state prosecutor, always a writer. He'd seen crime and punishment from both sides. He was not a cynic, but rather a black Irish fatalist who battled his own demons while reveling in the absurdity of it all.

A lunch with Higgins was a delightful, wet affair that could extend into the late afternoon. He was a staunch admirer of the great, politically incorrect writer John O'Hara. He owned a wooden sailboat and said that to maintain it was like burning hundred dollar bills.

Director Peter Yates, a Brit of all things, brilliantly captured the undiluted dinginess of Boston back then. There's not a frame of fat in it. It radiates authenticity.

The Boston accent has reduced more than a few actors to aspic. The attempts in "Mystic River," for example, were creations of unsurpassed ugliness. Nicholson never even tried in "The Departed."

Not so with Mitchum, who delivered a solid blue-collar accent in his slow rumble. The excellent Peter Boyle, playing a bartender/FBI informer, and Richard Jordan, playing an FBI undercover agent, were also fine. But it was Alex Rocco, who was born in Cambridge and grew up in Somerville, who spoke the real thing. He brought huge cred to the movie. (Rocco played a great Moe Greene in "The Godfather.")

So Eddie Coyle sits in the nose-bleed seats up in the old Boston Garden watching a Bruins game. It's a beautiful scene, pure Boston. He gets happily sloshed on bad beer. We hear him announce to no one in particular, "Number four, Bobby Orr, the greatest hockey player in the world."

Then a friend gives him a ride and he ends up in the cold, dark parking lot of Boston Bowl, the 24-hour place on Morrissey Boulevard.

Sam Allis's e-mail address is allis@globe.com.